"Kevin." Hagrid had been sitting on his hands for the last five minutes. He'd had enough. "Those are his parents. His mum and dad. You could've—"
"It had to look real," Kevin said.
Hagrid blinked.
"Voldemort will go through Draco's memories the first chance he gets. Every fight, every detail — he'll pick it apart." Kevin pulled out a chair and sat back down at Hagrid's table like the last half-hour had been a mild inconvenience. "So I adjusted the part where Draco and I spoke outside. Then I let him come in and have at it for real. The rest — Hermione, Harry, the whole row — that was genuine. Even better."
Hermione sat down heavily. Her hands were still shaking slightly. She'd known in the abstract that Kevin was capable of this kind of layered thinking. She did not always enjoy being a piece on the board.
"What about Draco's parents?" Ron asked. He'd gotten closest to Draco this year. He hated Lucius Malfoy with every fiber of his being and wouldn't have said so directly, but Narcissa had always been different in his head. And there was Draco.
"They'll be fine," Kevin said. "Lucius Malfoy is old money and old blood. The kind of resource Voldemort doesn't waste on a point. He wants the Malfoys useful, not dead. And now Draco looks like a genuine defection — which means Voldemort has leverage but no obvious reason to eliminate the family." He paused. "The real concern is the heart curse. But that's a problem for later."
Ron took a moment to absorb this. Then: "So he's going to be all right?"
"He'll be fine. And we treat it as a real split — no slip-ups, no eye contact, no warmth. Anyone who can't sell it convincingly, don't try."
They nodded. Even Ginny, who had the most personal reason to be glad Draco was gone, nodded.
They kept it between themselves. When the story reached others, as it inevitably would, the version they told was simple: Malfoy had finally shown his real colors, end of friendship, good riddance. The anger in that telling wasn't hard to make authentic.
Draco's side of the story wrote itself.
Back in the Slytherin common room, Goyle and Crabbe were waiting.
They hadn't always been this bold. For years, they'd followed at Draco's shoulder because that was where the safety was — he had the name, the backing, the instinct for where power ran and which way to lean. Crabbe and Goyle just needed to be nearby.
But Draco had drifted. Everyone could see it. The Gryffindor dinners, the tutoring sessions, the conspicuous absence at any gathering where the pure-blood families talked real business. Whatever he was becoming, it wasn't what Goyle and Crabbe's fathers approved of.
Voldemort's return changed the math entirely.
"Look who's crawled back," Goyle said. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, wearing the expression of a man who'd been rehearsing this moment. "Done playing house with the blood traitors?"
Draco didn't dignify it. His wand was out before Goyle finished the sentence.
"Expelliarmus."
Goyle's wand flew. Draco flicked sideways, found Crabbe next.
"Expelliarmus."
Both of them hit the wall, wandless, staring up at him.
"You don't get to say anything about those Gryffindors," Draco said. His voice was entirely steady. Whatever he was feeling, none of it was in his voice. "Not to me. Not anymore."
He walked past them without waiting for a response.
At the stairs, he stopped.
"Tell the Dark Lord I have full documentation of Kevin Croft's spells. Everything he can do. I'll give him all of it."
He didn't say "Master." He never had. Goyle and Crabbe both noticed.
He disappeared up the stairs before they could decide what to make of it.
The Daily Prophet arrived at breakfast three days after the Tournament.
Not the edition with Rita's article — that had been killed overnight. The replacement edition, the Ministry-approved one, which described the Triwizard Tournament as a triumph of international cooperation and the claims about Voldemort's resurrection as an irresponsible rumor circulated by persons unknown for unknown purposes.
There was a separate column about Dumbledore's "declining judgment" and a very pointed sidebar about the dangers of students receiving "excessive independent authority" in magical education settings.
Harry read it and went very still. Kevin watched the muscles in his jaw work.
"They're going to spend a year calling you a liar," Kevin said.
"I know."
"Most people are going to believe them. At least publicly. Believing the Ministry is easier."
Harry pushed the paper away. "I know that too."
Karkaroff, at least, had voted with his feet. The Durmstrang Headmaster had been gone from the grounds within hours of the resurrection announcement — no goodbye, no arrangements made for his students. He'd just left.
"He won't last," Kevin said.
"How long?" Sirius asked.
Kevin considered it. "Year. Maybe less."
He finished his tea and went to finish his marking.
His workshop was warm and slightly cluttered — Hermione's doing, over the winter months, a gradual accumulation of cushions and bookshelves and a small decorative plant that Kevin kept nearly killing and she kept bringing back from the brink. It was far more comfortable than it had been when he'd first claimed the room.
He was halfway through the fourth-year Potions grades — fourteen fails, which was depressing and not entirely his fault — when Dumbledore knocked and came in.
"This is a lovely space," Dumbledore said, turning a full slow circle to take it in, as if inspecting a room he'd never had reason to visit before. He ran a finger along a bookshelf. He examined the tea set. "That eastern style is particularly fine. I'll drop by for a cup next term."
"My door's always open, Headmaster."
Dumbledore examined a small framed sketch on the wall — one of Hermione's, Kevin realised, from last Christmas. "I have an old record player collecting dust. I'll bring it by. We could put on some music while you grade."
"I'd be genuinely delighted."
Both of them were watching Snape, who had come in quietly and was standing near the door with the expression of a man enduring a specific, targeted form of suffering.
"...Enough," Snape said.
He looked at Kevin with flat, ancient distaste. "Next year you will cover first through fourth years. Choose your own texts. Prepare your own lesson plans. Do not ask me about it."
He turned and left. The door closed firmly behind him.
Dumbledore allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.
"The students loved your lessons this year, Kevin. Genuinely — the improvement in their marks was notable. I think you'll find Severus has no plans to rearrange the arrangement."
He patted Kevin's shoulder once, twinkled at the tea set a final time, and wandered out after Snape with the unhurried ease of a man who'd just concluded the negotiation he'd wanted all along.
Kevin looked at the door for a moment. Then back at his marking.
He crossed another name off the fails list. Fourteen. Still fourteen.
He was going to miss this place.